wished to see the commandant. Thereupon we were ushered into a spacious
corridor, crowded with prisoners.
A young man pushed his way out of the crowd and accosted me in
Russian. I told him that I could not talk with him till I had seen the
commandant. He then said in perfect English: “I am an American--I am
going to be shot. You must save me.”
It was my business to protect Americans.
“What part of the United States are you from?” I asked.
“New York City--Grand Street.”
“Were you born in New York City?”
“No. I was born in Russia. But I am an American. You tell ’em they
can’t shoot me.”
“When were you naturalized in America?”
“Well, I didn’t take out any papers. But I lived in New York nine
years.”
“Then Russia is your country. When did you come back?”
“About a year ago.”
“Why did you come?”
“I wanted to help my country.” Now the tears were running down his face.
“My orderly here was also born in Russia,” I said. “But he is a
naturalized American citizen, and has been six years in the regular
army. You have come back to help your country, but your country does
not appear to appreciate your services. You might have returned in an
American uniform, but for nine years you lived in New York and did not
care to become an American citizen. Now you claim American protection.
Why are you going to be shot?”
“I don’t know. I never was told. Please go and ask to see my papers.
Every minute is valuable! Save my life! I am a good American!”
The other prisoners now swarmed about us. The commandant pushed through
them and eyed me angrily. I told my orderly to inform him that I had
come in response to his summons, and handed over his note.
To my amazement he stared at the note and declared that he had neither
written it nor sent it. And he informed me that the very smart young
Cossack soldier, who had clicked his heels so ceremoniously, was a
suspected Bolshevist against whom no definite evidence had been found.
And this “soldier” had himself been released from the prison only that
morning! (Later in the day he was re-arrested for bringing the forged
message to me.)
I explained to the commandant that under the circumstances I had no
intention of interfering, but I desired that the execution might be
delayed till I could talk with the local chief of staff. He assented.
I drove hurriedly to the office of the chief of staff of the Cossack
commander, and asked about the prisoner. The passport of the condemned
man was put before me. He had obtained the passport as a Russian
subject. Also, he had pretended upon arrival to be an envoy sent by
radicals in the United States to the Bolshevists. And I was shown
clippings from Russian papers, which related how the “New Yorker”
had in street speeches after his arrival in Siberia denounced the
government of the United States as “capitalistic.” He had been arrested
while trying to pass through a certain city with Bolshevist dispatches.
“I wish the execution might be delayed,” I said, “until I can talk with
this man again. He might give me some information of value.”
The chief of staff nodded his head, and as I went out, reached for the
telephone.
I drove back to the prison. The commandant, now smiling and suave,
led me, when I asked to see the prisoner, to a window overlooking the
prison yard. There he pointed to a figure lying in the reddened snow.
It was the “New Yorker.”
* * * * *
In a party of condemned prisoners taken out for execution, there was a
woman from the East Side of New York. She brought up the rear of the
little column. She was a tall, fine-looking Jewess, and bore herself
proudly, looking with scorn at the firing-squad.
When the death-grove was reached there was some delay. She observed
Americans among the on-lookers, and beckoned them over to her.
“Why, they’re not going to shoot me,” she boasted. “Look at me--I
am an attractive woman. I have been in that prison two months.” And
significantly, “I have been a good friend to the commandant. Tell him
I want to speak to him.” She smiled coyly.
The commandant came. He smiled at her admiringly, and gave her an
intimate wink.
“Of course I am not going to have you shot,” he declared. “I had to
bring you out here to make the others think that I am not showing you
any favoritism. But my soldiers have orders not to aim at you. Do not
fear the volley.”
These was a sharp command. The rifles came up. Some of the condemned
dropped to their knees in the snow to pray, some made a brave show of
facing the muzzles without a tremor, others openly wept. But the woman
stood upright, with a confident smile on her lips, sure that none of
the bullets was for her.
The volley crashed upon the cold air. The woman’s face took on an awful
look of surprise. Her body snapped backward from the impact of flying
lead, and then she pitched forward upon her face in the snow.
There are no sex lines drawn in matters of this kind. No, indeed, there
is perfect equality.
* * * * *
The mass of the people in Siberia are Bolshevist. I would say that
ninety-eight per cent of them are Bolshevist. This assertion can be
very easily misunderstood, and anti-Bolshevists will undoubtedly attack
it, while the Bolshevist propagandists will probably use it to prove
that they have as adherents the mass of the people. But by “Bolshevist”
I do not mean that the people have studied Bolshevism and have decided
to adhere to it because they feel that Bolshevism is the form of
government which they want--far from it.
What I do mean to say is that the mass of the people, being
discontented and being in poverty, favor Bolshevism because it is the
only thing which promises them the license which they believe to be
liberty. It is a system which has demonstrated to them that they have a
right to take what they can; it is a system that tells them that they
can do no wrong because they have been wronged--that no matter what the
poor man does, he is right. It is the “divine right of kings” applied
to the proletariat--it makes every man a king provided he has been a
man who worked for somebody else.
When I assert that the mass of the people are Bolshevist in their
tendencies, I do not mean that they are all able to discuss Bolshevism
intelligently, nor do I mean that they are fighting in the ranks of the
Bolshevist army with arms. I mean that the drosky-driver, the waiter,
the railroad man,--all working classes,--are hostile to any man who
attempts to tell them that Bolshevism is wrong, or any man who looks
as though he did not work with his hands. By “Bolshevism” I mean class
hatred. The mass of the people of Siberia have been exploited so long,
and have been tricked by promises which were never kept, that they are
willing to be exploited by any person who comes along and tells them
that they own everything in the country merely because they work.
They have never known good government. They do not believe that it
exists. To them “government” means oppression, whether it is government
in the United States, or government by the Czar.
Now if the mass of the people are Bolshevist (admitting my assertion
for the sake of argument, if it cannot be accepted fully) and the
forces of the United States in Siberia attempt to control the people,
it might be argued that we would be opposing the wishes of the
majority of the people of Siberia--not allowing them to have the form
of government they desire. In other words, if we go to war against
Bolshevism, it means killing all Bolshevists, and if nearly all the
people in Siberia are Bolshevistic, it would mean, carried to its
logical conclusion, killing or bringing into subjection the mass of
people in Siberia.
We do not wish to do that. Then why do we not let them remain
Bolshevist and run the country with soviets?
We are a-straddle a barbed-wire fence in Siberia. The Czechs and the
Cossacks have whipped the Bolshevist forces in Siberia. We have aided
neither the Czechs nor the Cossacks militarily, and the Bolshevists
have been waiting till we and the Czechs got out. While waiting, the
Bolshevists have joined Cossack armies or have behaved themselves to
some extent--they are waiting till the Allies in Siberia give them a
clear field again. And the Allies have been surrounded by a vanishing
army--fighting Bolshevists who quit fighting and “surrender” when they
see that they are in danger of capture or defeat.
I do not believe that Bolshevism is going to be destroyed by “decisive
defeats” of Bolshevist armies. Bolshevist forces have been “decisively
defeated” time and again, and driven out of many cities, only to
reorganize in the rear of their attackers. Bolshevism can only be
smothered by attacking the idea of Bolshevism, for it is a soul-disease
which has infected vast masses of people who have been wronged for
centuries.
I do not object to the fact that these people wish to correct the
wrongs of government, the wrongs of exploitation, the wrongs of
enforced poverty which they have endured in a land of great natural
wealth. The greatest wrong which has been committed against them is
the system which has kept them in ignorance. They must be saved from
their own ignorance. They must be saved from a new exploitation which
is greater than any they have ever known. I do not believe that wrongs
against a people can be righted by committing new wrongs.
These people who are Bolshevist in their tendencies, are Bolshevist
because they have not seen anything better than Bolshevism, which was
visualized for them in tons of worthless money distributed to them.
We must demonstrate good government to them, even though we have to
“interfere” to do so. They are ready to swing to anything which proves
its worth. We have attempted to prove things by reasoning, when they
are not equipped mentally to reason. They suspect and fear us because
we reason while we have an expedition on their ground--and soldiers
to them mean intimidation, treachery and death. They do not trust each
other, how can they trust us? They do not trust the Japanese, and we
are allied with the Japanese.
XXVII
THE JOKER IN BOLSHEVISM
The Bolshevists of Siberia hate wall-paper. After traveling in that
country, I came to the conclusion that a Bolshevist operates on the
theory that there can be no freedom for anybody so long as a single
strip of wall-paper remains on any wall. Neither can there be any
freedom while glassware is unbroken, furniture unsmashed, curtains are
whole, windows intact, books unburned. And the parlor Bolshevists of
the United States, if they were really consistent, would stop talking
and start a little freedom in their own homes by pulling everything
down that is up, and pulling everything up that is down, sweeping the
total into the street and putting a match to it.
There is a joker in this “new form of government” known as Bolshevism.
In fact, the joker is the very core of the whole matter. Mutilated
wall-paper gave me my first inkling of that joker. In Chita, the
searchers after freedom had done a thorough job. For not only were the
interior walls of the town everywhere stripped clean, but, according to
the proprietor of a local store the stock in the different shops had
gone to feed the bon-fires.
“So the Bolshevists hate wall-paper even before it is hung,” I said to
this merchant.
“Yes,” he replied through my interpreter. “I heard from a friend in
another town that soon we’d be able to get some from Japan. But a
German prisoner of war, who helps my wife with the cooking, says to
wait till the railroad opens up to Petrograd, and then I’ll be able to
get cheaper and better wall-paper from Germany.”
I lunched that day at the Hotel Dayooria. A German prisoner of war was
my waiter. He was a meek sort of person who had set out from home with
Kultur on the point of his bayonet and now found himself a slave in a
foreign land. He served my tea in a glass that had been made from a
wine bottle by cutting the top off. The upper edge of the glass was
dangerously sharp.
“I am sorry, captain,” said the waiter; “--no other glasses now.” (He
spoke in English. He had learned it in a German school. He gently
hinted that any stray magazines I might have would be welcome.)
“Well, when is the boss going to order some regular goblets?”--which
was more or less an attempt at humor on my part, since in Siberia at
that time there was small chance of getting anything from anywhere.
“Pretty soon we’ll have glassware from Germany,” the waiter assured me
proudly. Then with a click of his heels, he went back to the kitchen.
That was my second glimpse of the joker.
Across the street from the Dayooria was a much larger and more modern
hotel, the Select. The lower windows on the street were all boarded up,
for these had been the fronts of banks and shops when the Bolshevists
cut loose on the town, and, in order to become free, found it necessary
to smash the plate-glass, and loot--all of which was done to the (I was
going to say King’s) proletariat’s taste.
But the interior of the Select had not suffered so complete a wrecking
as the Dayooria. An American consul had once occupied a room at the
Select, and through the kindness of the Cossack chief of staff, I was
allowed to rent this room, with another for my interpreter. (The rent
was raised each week, a mere detail even in Bolshevist Siberia.)
There was a shortage of electric globes in Chita. But the commandant
managed so that I had globes for the three wires hanging from my
ceiling, and a globe for the drop-light on my desk. In the halls of the
hotel, as in my room, the globes hung from the ceilings on wires. One
evening in a hall I observed a German war prisoner shorten the loop in
one wire so that the globe fell as low as his shoulder. The next time
he came through from the kitchen to the officers’ mess with a tray, he
bumped the globe in such a manner that it crashed against the wall, and
broke.
The same night I noticed that one of the lights in my room was not
burning. I called the German prisoner who acted as janitor, and asked
him to fix it. He brought a ladder, climbed up, unscrewed the globe,
dropped it, and broke it. He said he felt rather bad about it, too. It
was a blot on his efficiency.
The next night another globe gave no light. I investigated myself, by
moving my bed and piling my two lockers on it. The globe burned all
right when it was screwed into the socket. I unscrewed it until it
again failed to burn, moved the bed and lockers back into place, and
called the same German. He came with his ladder, examined the globe,
told me it was burned out, and took it away.
When the third globe went dark, I found that it too, had been unscrewed
enough to break the circuit. The German came, climbed his ladder, and
with pliers, when he thought I was not looking, pried off the glass
tip, rendering the globe useless. Then he told me the globe was no
good. And--there were no more globes.
Now all I had left was the globe in the drop-light. Every morning I hid
it, and thereby worried the German. There was evidence that he hunted
for it when I was out of my room. Why were the janitor and the waiter
destroying globes that were a necessity even to themselves? I clinched
my suspicions by asking a former merchant of electrical supplies this
question: “Where did you buy your electric globes and fixtures before
the war?” Well, they came from Moscow--mostly made in Germany.
Here was another corner of that joker! When Russian Bolshevists were
afraid they would get caught breaking things, the German prisoners
helped the game along by doing a little sly smashing on their own
account!
Because I had the room of a former American consul, the Russian owner
of a gold mine near Chita called upon me, thinking I was the present
American consul. He said he wanted advice as to where he might, some
time in the future, buy mining-machinery.
The Bolshevists had wrecked his entire plant. Their leaders had told
the peasants that the mines of Siberia belong to all, and that in time
a Bolshevist government would work the mines, and divide the gold among
the people. In that way no one would become richer than someone else.
“The German prisoners,” he said, “now tell my workmen that if I have
machinery I will need only a few men, and so hundreds of workmen will
be thrown out of jobs. Of course, if I could put machinery in I would
employ ten times as many men as I do now. I can’t make my mine pay
without machinery, and for the present I am employing only common labor
to clean things up so as to be ready for better times. If we Russian
mine owners can’t make our mines pay, we’ll have to sell out. During
the revolution, German capitalists have bought up a lot of companies in
European Russia at bankrupt prices.
“But assuming that Germany takes the mines, how can the Germans hope
to operate them if the workmen refuse to allow machinery to be used in
them?”
“You do not know our _moujiks_,” he replied. “They will not believe
what I tell them for their own good. But they will believe the lies
of an outsider--any childish story told to swindle them. By the time
Germany is ready to sell us machinery, maybe the _moujiks_ will be told
not to smash it--if the machinery is German.”
And picture the amount of mining-machinery that Siberia will be able
to use! For two thousand versts to the north of Chita there are gold
fields. The fields which have been developed make scarcely a dot on the
map. No. One Russian mine-worker will not become richer than another
when that vast country is worked. If Germany’s plans do not miscarry,
those who will profit first will be the German machinery manufacturers.
It was brought to my attention in a certain part of Siberia that wool,
cow hair and camel hair, valued at nine million rubles, purchased just
before the revolution by a Boston company through its Moscow agency,
was to be seized. Who was going to seize it is not a matter for me to
discuss here, but I can say there was good evidence that it would have
gone in the direction of Germany.
The warehouses containing this material were in three cities, and
somehow escaped being burned. Whenever Bolshevist bands broke loose
to loot and burn, the word must have been passed from some mysterious
fountain-head to spare the warehouses containing that wool and
hair--for, mind, those warehouses were in three different cities, far
apart. This would indicate that, after all, there is a system to
Bolshevism. The system appears to be, “Smash machinery and manufactured
goods but spare raw material.” As the wool and hair was owned by an
American company, an inference might be drawn that the protection
was due to its being American property. If so, why--when there was
a rumor that American troops might soon be in the vicinity of the
warehouses--was it to be seized and moved toward Germany?
Siberian Bolshevists with whom I talked told me of the great yearning
for education among the masses, and how the Bolshevists would provide
plenty of schools. I examined the condition of several schools where
the Bolshevists had been in control for a time. Every possible book had
been destroyed--geographies, grammars, spelling-books. It was a case
of _spurlos versenkt_. Pens, paper, pencils, maps, erasers, rulers,
ink and all other school accessories went the way of the books--to the
bon-fires in the streets. A yearning to learn? Certainly. One might
describe it as a burning desire. And will it not be fine for Leipsic to
print Russia’s new school books, with some German propaganda thrown in
free? Also, _lieber Gott_, vot a market for pencils and other little
things! (Note for Leipsic: Printers in Japan are already printing
Russian books!)
There is a significant angle to the smashing and burning that has gone
on in Russia--an angle which the American working man should bear in
mind when he is told that Russian Bolshevists are on the right track
for turning a _moujik_ into a magnate over night. Russia is a great
producer of raw material. Smashed machinery there means that whatever
raw material escapes destruction must seek a foreign market. Naturally,
if such material cannot be sold to a Russian factory, the factory
abroad buys it much cheaper than if there were a home demand for it.
Also, smashed machinery in Russia means no production in Russia of
manufactured goods; and no manufactured goods in Russia means that the
very working men who smashed the machinery must buy goods manufactured
abroad.
Further, if there are no goods manufactured in Russia, the foreign
manufacturer makes his own prices, both for what he buys from Russia
and what he sells to her. In other words, he gets raw materials from
her at low prices, and sells manufactured goods to her at high prices.
This forces all Russian labor, skilled as well as unskilled, into
working at low wages on the production of raw materials, and the cost
of the raw materials is constantly being pulled down because, with no
Russian demand for factory-skilled labor, there is a surplus of labor.
So the Russian manufacturing capitalist is wiped out, sure enough,
along with all machinery. Also, in time, Russian skilled labor will be
wiped out!
And for this condition of affairs, Russians can thank themselves!
Germany realized how crude were her methods when she sent to Belgium
and France a force that, operating behind her fighting men, wrecked
or burned factories, and seized raw material. That was a job she did
herself, and she had to take the blame of the whole world for it.
She had to devise a scheme by which she could get the same results
elsewhere without having to bear any blame.
That scheme was Bolshevism. The craftiest criminals always use fools
as their tools. And in Bolshevism Germany found the _Ersatz_, or
substitute, for an army of thieving and destroying Germans. It has
been estimated that more than a million Germans are prisoners of war
in Russia. These men whispered anti-capitalistic propaganda into the
ear of the poor _moujik_, who wants education so badly that he is
willing to burn school books, and who thinks he can attain freedom by
ripping off wall-paper. And the _moujik_, under skillful leadership,
did Germany’s work, and did it for nothing. That same Ivan who had died
by millions to beat the Germans ran home from the trenches and wrecked
his own country to the Kaiser’s taste, at the Kaiser’s word--wrecked it
more thoroughly than the German armies would have been able to wreck
it. For he smashed everything but the ikons and the rubber-plants.
Why he did not destroy the rubber-plants we cannot understand. Is it
because Germany does not wish to sell rubber-plants to Russia?
So keen were the Germans to help the Russian Bolshevists to “overthrow
the Russian capitalists,” that the German capitalists loaned the
Bolshevists armored cars and cannon made in Germany by the Krupp works
and in Austria by the Skoda works. Evidently the German capitalists
had suddenly fallen in love with the Russian proletariat! (This is a
nut for our own parlor Bolshevists to crack.)
I can guess how they will crack it. They will say, “Yes, the Russian
Bolshevists took help from the German capitalists, but in time they
will turn those guns upon the very capitalists who loaned them.” Yet
what I ask to know, as Hashimura Togo would say, is, “Why did the
German capitalists ever begin to help the Bolshevists?”
After all, Russian capitalists are the only people who can give
Russian working men jobs. By the same token, German capitalists are
the only people who can give German working men jobs. If the German
capitalists do not want the Russian capitalists to be able to give jobs
to Russians, are the German capitalists who loaned guns to Russian
Bolshevists, friends of the Russian working men?
The first parlor Bolshevist who answers that question correctly will
explain the joker in Bolshevism.